Ancient Hiss Story (10 page)

J
ersey was
bent over the artifacts table when Kate and Gertie got to her site. As they approached her, she whirled around. Then, upon seeing it was Kate and Gertie, gave a nervous laugh.

“I thought I heard something behind me. You startled me,” she said.

“Sorry about that.” Kate jerked her chin toward the table. “Did you guys come up with some new finds?”

“What? Oh, no … I was just looking over what we had.” Jersey narrowed her eyes at Kate. “So, what brings you here?”

“Well, I actually came with kind of a warning. According to Gideon, there’s some really bad poachers in the area.”

“Oh? We deal with poachers all the time. Is there something special about these guys?”

“Gideon says they’re quite ruthless. I just wanted to come and warn you so you could be on extra alert,” Kate said. “Did you hear anything about poachers from the people you’re working for?”

Jersey’s eyes slid toward the camp. Ed was just coming out of his tent. Kate saw his eyes darken when he noticed them. He changed direction and headed their way.

“I haven’t heard anything. Ed’s usually the one who communicates with them, but as you know, communication out here can be pretty spotty. I’m not sure if he’s talked to them recently,” Jersey said.

Kate shrugged. “They may not know. The
Ritzholdt
was watching this particular group and that’s how I found out.”

Jersey’s brows ticked up. “Oh. Well, thanks for letting me know. I really appreciate that. We’ll be sure to be extra watchful.”

“What’s going on?” Ed glanced from Jersey to Kate.

“Kate was nice enough to bring us a warning about some poachers in the area,” Jersey said.

“Yeah? We appreciate that.” Ed looked at Kate. He didn’t seem appreciative. He glanced at the artifact table. “I think we'd better start packing up these finds.”

“Have you heard anything about any artifact thieves in the area?” Gertie quizzed Ed.

“No. We haven’t talked to the home base,” he said.

“We’ve been busy digging,” Jersey added.

“Speaking of which…” Ed flipped his wrist over to look at his watch which he wore with the face on the inside. Kate struggled to keep from gasping when she recognized a tattoo peeking out from under his wide watch band—a snake in a figure eight. “We'd better get going. We have a deadline to meet.”

“He’s right.” Jersey put her arms around Kate and Gertie’s shoulders, turning them around and sweeping them out of the tent. “Were taking a trip into town on Friday to get some of this shipped out. Our backers are very anxious and we need to recover some more artifacts so we are under a tight deadline. But I really do appreciate you guys coming by. Maybe we could get together for dinner again?”

“That sounds like fun,” Kate said. Jersey started escorting them toward the small path that ended in the pit Kate had fallen into when they'd first met, but Kate stopped her and turned toward another path.

“We moved camp. It’s in that direction now.” She pointed toward the narrow path she and Gertie had come in on.

Jersey’s face scrunched up. “Really? Why did you move?”

Kate hesitated. She realized too late that she hadn’t thought up a sufficient lie.

“We found what we think were some water reservoirs that we wanted to explore further.” Gertie saved her. “We figured it would be better if our camp was closer. Speaking of which, we'd better get back. Right, Kate?”

“Right. We’ll see you soon.” Kate waved to Jersey, and then turned and started down the path they’d come in on.

When they’d walked for a little ways, Kate heard a slithery sound behind her. She whirled around, whacking at a plant with her walking stick. Nothing was in the plant. She heard the sound again but realized it was further back.

“Did you hear that?” Kate asked.

Gertie, who had gotten a few steps ahead of her, stopped and cocked her head sideways. She listened for a few seconds and shook her head. “I didn’t hear anything.”

Kate shrugged. “Must be my imagination. I thought I heard something back there.”

“Probably just a monkey,” Gertie said. “This jungle is full of them, you know.”

“I know.” Kate glanced uneasily behind her, remembering the tattoo on Ed’s wrist. Coincidence? Or did Ed have a connection to the hookah man? And if so, what did it mean? Snake Ring had killed the hookah man, but why? And if Snake Ring was an enemy of the hookah man, did that mean he was an enemy of Ed? Would that make Ed her ally?

Vic’s voice crackled through the walkie-talkie clipped to Kate’s belt. “Where are you guys?”

Kate picked up the little device and pressed the button. “We're just heading back from Jersey’s site now.”

“Get a move on. I think we found something significant.”

K
ate was surprised
at the amount of work they’d done in the short time she'd been gone. The five of them had managed to clear out an area that must have been twenty feet wide. They were standing in a cluster, pointing at something on the ground.

Kate felt the excitement bubble up in her chest as she got closer. “What is it? What did you find?”

They stepped aside to reveal two columns of stone about knee height. The tops were jagged as if the stones had broken off. They were no ordinary stones. Kate could see they were carved with symbols.

“It looks like this used to be some sort of archway.” Carlotta pointed to a heap of what looked like vine-covered logs that lay strewn to the left. “I think this is the rest of the sides and the top. They must’ve collapsed and fallen over sometime during the last six hundred years.”

Kate bent over to inspect them. Carlotta was right. They weren’t logs as they’d first appeared. They were stone—the same type of limestone the jagged columns were made out of.

She pulled on the vines that clung to the sides and revealed some of the stone below which had the same etchings as the columns. A closer look revealed that they appeared to be a bunch of winged frogs hopping in a line. In between the frogs were geometric carvings.

“This is great. Do you think the archway leads to something?” Kate peered into the dense forest behind the broken columns of the archway.

“That’s what we were thinking.” Benny stepped backwards, away from the two posts sticking out of the ground. He looked up at the sky. “If this was a complete archway you could see that the sun would line up directly in the center and show through it at a certain time of day.”

Kate stood next to him and glanced at her watch. It was eleven forty-five and the sun was just to the left of the archway. “Looks like it would line up at just about high noon,” she said.

“I’d be more interested to see what the archway leads to.” Gertie took several paces past the archway and shaded her eyes to peer into the forest. “It looks like there’s a mound in there.”

“We should clear the rest of this out,” Kate said.

They all got to work with their various tools, clearing the dense vegetation. Kate was in the front, swinging her walking stick like a sickle.

Clonk
.

Instead of the soft, yielding vegetation she was expecting, her stick hit something hard at the very base of the hill. Stone. “I think there’s a rock here.”

Sal came over with a small shovel and tried to pry up the rock to get it out of the way. He tossed the rock aside and Kate noticed it had an unnatural, squarish appearance.

“Wait a minute. That’s no ordinary rock.” Kate bent down and brushed off the thick, green moss that covered the rock. The rock looked like it had been chiseled but not recently—more like hundreds of years ago. She took a step back and looked at the hill, noticing for the first time it was pyramid-shaped.

Gertie stood beside her and noticed at the same time. “That’s no hill. That there is a pyramid.”

A ripple of excitement ran through them and they all got busy uncovering the bottom layer of stones. Kate could see that the pyramid had collapsed in on itself in several areas where the ground had sunken. This ‘mound’ was no natural object. It was manmade.

“It’s definitely a pyramid, but probably not a tomb,” Vic said. “It’s not hollow.”

“The Aztecs didn’t have pyramids like the Egyptians. Not that we know of, anyway. They built theirs on mounds of dirt and faced them in stone,” Benny said, surprising them all with his knowledge.

“But it’s still exciting. And if I’m not mistaken, these symbols here,” Sal pointed to one of the stones, “are Aztec, not Mayan. So this is our first indication that we're on the right path.”

“This could be the beginning of the Aztec settlement. We could be very near the tomb,” Vic added.

“Yeah, but which direction is it in?” Kate asked. She remembered how she had thought someone was following them. Markovic’s people could be hiding in the woods, just waiting for them to discover the tomb so they could then pounce on them, kill them and take everything for themselves.

They needed a map, something that would point them toward the location of the tomb quickly. If they fiddled around out here for much longer, they risked losing everything to the bad guys.

Her watch made static noises and Kate realized it was time for her to communicate with Gideon. She sat on the bottom ledge of the pyramid, took out one of the hard brushes Gideon had supplied her from her vest pocket and started scrubbing the moss and vines from the stone to see if there were any carvings.

“You there?” Gideon’s voice blared out of her watch.

Kate worked the brush with her right hand and looked at the watch on her left. “I am and I think I might have something exciting to report.”

“Me, too. You go first. But first, have you had any trouble with Markovic?”

Kate’s gut churned. “He hasn’t bothered us out here, but I have some bad news about your contact. He’s been killed. And one of Markovic’s men is the killer.”

Gideon’s mouth tightened. “That’s not good. He might have gotten the same information you have and could be on to you right now.”

Kate brushed away the thoughts of someone following them. “And that’s not all. I ran into Ace Mason back in the market where your contact was.”

Gideon’s mouth got even tighter. “Really? So
that’s
why he was asking so many questions. What’s his interest in this?”

“I was hoping you could tell
me
. He tried to warn me off from looking for the tomb.”

“That doesn’t sound like something that the FBI would do.”

Gertie, who had been standing beside her, cut in. “Like I said before, maybe our friend Ace is moonlighting. Maybe he wants to take the treasure for himself and set up a little retirement plan. I hear the FBI doesn’t have that great of a pension.”

Kate thought about this, but it didn’t fit. Ace was a by-the-book kind of guy. She’d found that out the hard way. There had to be more to it, but she had no idea what it could be. “I don’t think so. For some reason, the FBI is interested in this tomb. Ace alluded to there being more to it than just treasure. He made it sound like Itizuma had some secret that the FBI didn’t want to get out.”

Gertie scoffed. “What could some guy possibly have known six hundred years ago that could be important the FBI now?”

“That’s a good question,” Gideon said. “In fact, you may not be far off, though. I’ve done some research on the archaeologist this painting came from. Reginald White. His disappearance thirty years ago was very mysterious. He disappeared right from the archaeological dig in Mexico. But before that, there was quite a bit of press. He said he was working on recovering something that would stun the world. I have an old picture of his press conference somewhere. It’s on site and I wondered if you might recognize the area. It could give you a clue to where the tomb is. But first, I wanted to tell you that I've discovered more under the painting.”

That caught Kate’s attention. She glanced at the watch face, the brush in her hand poised motionless over the stone. “Oh?”

“Yes, it seems there is a map of sorts. It’s all symbols, but I think it might lead to the tomb. Of course, you need a reference point to follow it.”

“Reference point?”

“Yes. On the map, it shows a frog-like creature.”

Kate’s heart skittered in her chest. “Wait a minute. I think we have that here.” She ran over to the columns and put the watch camera up to show him. “Like this?”

“Sort of. I’ll download a picture of it to your watch, but I’m afraid it might not help,” Gideon said.

“Why not?”

“We only have one part of the map. The rest of it must be behind the half of the painting that Markovic has.”

“And that’s why he’s here. He either knows how to get to the tomb or needs the other half of the map from me.”

“Right. I downloaded the map and the picture of Reginald White’s press conference. Maybe his location will give you a clue. The article says it was near his dig.”

Kate looked at the watch. The display showed a middle-aged man, presumably Reginald White. He was gray-haired and wearing a white suit. Kate frowned at the scene. It looked very similar to where they were right now. Her eyes drifted over to the man standing with him.

Her heart jerked. That man was the spitting image of Jersey’s assistant, Ed.

“Who’s that with him?” she asked.

“Let me see … it says here it’s his assistant. Ronald Raines. Why do you ask?”

“Because that guy is the spitting image of Jersey’s assistant. I knew there was something weird about that guy!” Kate looked up in excitement.

“Wait a minute,” Gideon said. “The guy in the picture couldn’t be her assistant. This picture is thirty years old. He’d be an old man by now.”

“Oh, I guess you’re right. Ed is only in his mid-thirties. It couldn’t be
him
but maybe it’s one of his relatives. Maybe Ed had a grandfather who worked with Reginald White. That grandfather might’ve told Ed what they were on to and that’s why he’s insinuated himself in Jersey’s project.”

“You think Ed plans to use Jersey’s work to help him get to the tomb and steal everything for himself?” Gideon asked.

“That’s right.” Kate felt vindicated. She knew there was a reason she didn’t trust Ed. Then her thoughts turned dark. Ed was obviously unscrupulous, and poor Jersey trusted him and had no idea what he might do to her. “I'd better go warn Jersey right away!”